The Part About the Critics
This is a guide to 'The Part About the Critics', covering the first book of '2666', which runs from page 1 to 159 in the 2009 Picador paperback edition. Title and epigraph 2666 "Almost the only direct clues to interpretation found in this massive novel are its title and its epigraph. The title, as many have pointed out, is directly referenced at various points in Bolaño’s other works (most notably in Amulet) and seems to have represented something of an endpoint or void for him. If Bolaño’s personal mythology can be likened to a religion, the year 2666 is his Judgment Day." (Scott Esposito) From Amulet: “Guerrero, at that time of night, is more like a cemetery than an avenue, not a cemetery in 1974 or in 1968, or 1975, but a cemetery in the year 2666, a forgotten cemetery under the eyelid of a corpse or an unborn child, bathed in the dispassionate fluids of an eye that tried so hard to forget one particular thing that it ended up forgetting everything else.” From The Savage Detectives: "And Cesárea said something about days to come....and the teacher, to change the subject, asked her what times she meant and when they would be. And Cesárea named a date, sometime around the year 2600. Two thousand six hundred and something." "An oasis of horror in a desert of boredom." - Charles Baudelaire "The book’s epigraph ... is from one of the lengthier poems in Baudelaire’s masterwork, The Flowers of Evil, generally considered a cornerstone of Modernist literature. The poem in which the quote is found is “Le Voyage” (alternatively translated at “The Voyage” and “Travelers”), and although the excerpt would seem to indicate that the “oasis of horror” is a physical place (Santa Teresa, perhaps), in the context of the poem the locus of horror shifts from the land to the person: O bitter is the knowledge that one draws from the voyage! The monotonous and tiny world, today Yesterday, tomorrow, always, shows us our reflections, An oasis of horror in a desert of boredom!' Intentional or not, the ambiguity is fitting. Although Bolaño's final novel is nothing if not fecund with the tiny reservoirs of horror that lurk within and perversely dominate otherwise mundane lives, in 2666 Bolaño is most successful at realizing this horror when finding it in the landscape." (Scott Esposito) From Natasha Wimmer's "Notes Toward an Annotated Edition of 2666": "Bolaño rarely wrote about the liver condition that was the cause of his death, but in a lecture called 'Literature + Illness = Illness' (dedicated to 'my friend, Doctor Victor Vargas, hepatologist') he speaks directly and movingly about what it's like to know that death may be near. Of the line from Baudelaire's poem 'Le Voyage' that became the epigraph of 2666, he writes: 'And this is really more than enough. In the middle of a desert of boredom, an oasis of horror. There is no more lucid diagnosis for the illness of modern man. To escape boredom, to escape deadlock, all we have at hand, though not so close at hand, because even here an effort is required, is horror, or in other words, evil.'" Pages 1 - 50 '''pg 3: Benno von Archimboldi And so the search begins. D'Arsonval... part of a trilogy (made up of the English-themed ''The Garden ''and the Polish-themed ''The Leather Mask, ''together with the clearly French-themed ''D'Arsonval)'' It has been proposed that these three novels help show RB's inspirations for Archimboldi, as well as providing clues to the structure of the novel. * D'Arsonval: presumably concerning or inspired by Jacques-Arsène d'Arsonval, a French electrophysiologist. This is almost certainly a reference to Cortázar's Hopscotch and 62: A Model Kit, as noted by Ricardo Piglia in an interview: "I've always thought that 2666, among many other things, is an extraordinary commentary, both elliptical and displaced, on 62: A Model Kit and the 62nd chapter of Hopscotch. To me, this type of tension and dialogue between traditions defines what is happening today in Spanish language literature." Chapter 62 of Hopscotch, translated by Gregory Rabassa: "For a time Morelli had considered writing a book whose form remained in loose notes. That which most clearly described it is the following: 'Psychology, words with an air of age and maturity. A Swede is working on a chemical theory of thought. Chemistry, electromagnetism, secret flows of life force, it all comes to strangely evoke the notion of mana; thus, in the margins of social conduct, an interaction of a different nature could be suspected, a billiard ball that some individuals sustain or suffer, a drama without Oedipus, without Rastignac, without Phaedra, a drama impersonal in the measure that the consciences and the passions of its actors only come to be compromised a posteriori. As if the subliminal levels were those that linked and unlinked the ball of yarn made up of the group of individuals compromised in the drama. Or, to give the Swede his due: as if certain individuals affected the profound chemistry of others and vice versa, such that the most curious and inquieting chain reactions came to pass, fissions and transmutations. In such a situation, a genial extrapolation is enough to postulate a group of humans who believe themselves to react psychologically in the classic sense of that old, old word, but who don't represent anything more than an instance of that flow of inanimate material, of the infinite interaction of what we formerly called desires, sympathies, volitions, convictions, and which here appear as something irreducible to all reason and to all description: inhabiting, foreign forces that advance in an attempt to obtain their right to exist; a search superior to our own selves as individuals, that brings us together for its own ends, a dark necessity to evade the homo sapiens state, moving toward... what homo? Because sapiens is another old, old word, one of those that must be deeply and thoroughly cleansed before attempting to use it with any certain meaning. If I were to write that book, standard behaviors (including those most bizarre, that most privileged category) would be unexplainable through customary psychological instruments. The actors would appear insane or completely idiotic. They wouldn't show themselves totally incapable of the usual behaviors of challenge and response: love, jealousy, piety and so on; rather, in their persons, a thing that homo sapiens guards in the subliminal plane would open laboriously as a pathway, as if a third eye were laboriously blinking below the frontal bone. Everythying would exist as an inquietude, an unease, a continuous uprootment, a territory where psychological causality would give way disconcertedly, and the puppets would destroy each other or love each other or acknowledge each other, only rarely suspecting that life attempts to change its key in and through and for them, that a hardly-conceivable attempt is being born in man as in other times were born the key-of-reason, the key-of-sentiment, the key-of-pragmatism. That in each successive defeat there lies a rapproachment to the final mutation, and that man is not, rather he seeks to be, designs to be, grasping between words and behaviors and happiness splattered with blood and other rhetorics such as this." * The Garden: Most likely a reference to Borges' The Garden of Forking Paths (El jardín de senderos que se bifurcan) - decidedly anglophiliac in nature. * The Leather Mask: Perhaps related to Wytold Gombrowicz. the person his professor had in mind was the Italian painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1526 - 1593), best known for slightly grotesque portraits of people composed of objects such as fish, vegetables, fruit, birds, etc. pg 4: Then Pelletier could think back on the day when he first read Archimboldi, and he saw himself, young and poor, living in a ''chambre de bonne'' Natasha Wimmer: "Proposition: Part 1 of 2666 as satirical sequel to The Savage Detectives. The visceral realists, young idealists, have grown up to become professors of literature, still seekers but no longer idealistic, writing scholarly papers instead of poetry and feuding with academic rivals instead of opposing schools of poets. ... What may strike readers first, however, is how different 2666 is from The Savage Detectives. Rodrigo Fresan, novelist, critic, and friend of Bolaño explains the relationship this way: 2666'' is the twin sister--different but complementary--of'' The Savage Detectives''.'" '''He saw himself, as we've said Natasha Wimmer: "Who is this shadowy 'we,' and does 2666 have a true first-person narrator? If so, he (or she, or they) is elusive, making only occasional appearances in an otherwise omniscient third person narrative. Ignacio Echevarria, Bolaño's friend and literary executor, offers a clue. In a note found after the writer's death, Bolaño wrote: 'The narrator of 2666 is Arturo Belano.' If this is true, and not a posthumous practical joke, it is not borne out by anything so obvious as a cameo appearance by Belano, the protagonist of The Savage Detectives (though see note to p. 558). Instead, it would seem to suggest that the novel be read as a product of the mind of Arturo Belano. Note that the narrator of the central section of The Savage Detectives is also an unidentified figure, a faceless interviewer whose presence is only hinted at by the tone of the many characters who testify to their involvement with Arturo Belano and Ulises Lima." pg 6 Later he would discover the work of a modern author, Junger Natasha Wimmer: "Ernst Junger (1895-1998), German writer and thinker, author of the World War I memoir Storm of Steel and controversial exponent of what has been called the 'fascist unconscious' (by scholar Klaus Theweleit, not Bolaño, though the phrase would serve as a decent subtitle for Nazi Literature in the Americas). Junger is a minor character in By Night in Chile, where he carries on a conversation with a Chilean diplomat about 'the human and the divine, war and peace, Italian painting and Nordic painting, the source of evil and the effects of evil that sometimes seem to be triggered by chance, the flora and fauna of Chile.'" pg 9 Her discovery of Archimboldi was the least traumatic of all, and the least poetic. ... as if instead of drinking tea that afternoon, Norton had drunk a steaming cup of peyote. An odd section. We are told her experience of finding Archimboldi's writing is the least poetic and yet this is, by far, the most poetic writing in the book up to this point. pg 19 strangely, the Swabian remembered Archimboldi's jacket more clearly than the novel crammed into its pocket... a black leather coat with a high collar Natasha Wimmer: "The black leather jacket as fetish object, as well as a link between the Archimboldi glimpsed in Part 1 and the Archimboldi of Part V." pg 30 The film was Japanese The film described is sort of similar to The Ring. pg 40 Norton made frequent and rather tasteless references to her ex-husband as a lurking threat... Does he make a cameo later, or is this just foreboding? pg 41 Liz Norton, whom ... both had recognized not as the Fury who destroyed their friendship ... nor as Hecate but as the angel who had fortified their friendship, forcibly shown them what they knew all along ... which was that they were civilized beings More references to Greek mythology. Of course, Norton has not shown them that they're civilized beings, in light of her role in the later incident with the cab driver. pg 43 Around this time, Morini was the first of the four to read an article about the killings in Sonora The first mention of Santa Teresa, which is based on the real-life Ciudad Juárez. Bolaño has renamed and relocated the city to a different state, Sonora, which borders Arizona and New Mexico. Santa Teresa, like Ciudad Juárez, is an industrial center with many maquiladoras (assembly plants). Since the early '90s, over 350 women and girls have been murdered there, with at least 400 more reported missing. These killings and disappearances eventually attracted international attention, in a similar manner to how things unfold in 2666. And instead of getting on he next plane to Italy, she had decided to buy a bus ticket and set off on a long trip to Sonora. ... An hour later he'd forgotten the matter completely. 'The Part About the Crimes' contains multiple instances of female journalists being murdered. Typically dark humor here. pg 45 And speaking of the Greeks, it would be fair to say that Espinoza and Pelletier believed themselves to be (and in their perverse way, were) incarnations of Ulysses Natasha Wimmer: "In an essay on Bolaño titled 'La batalla futura,' the Mexican novelist and critic Juan Villoro (see note to p. 257(?)) suggests that the characters of 2666 can be seen as 'individuals removed from the vacillations of the inner life who, like Greek heroes, advance toward their destiny with their eyes wide open.' This sets them in sharp contrast to the characters of The Savage Detectives, who endlessly plumb their inner lives. Classical mythology is a touchstone for Bolaño in 2666, and allusions (often eccentric) to the Greeks proliferate. Perhaps the most bizarre is the suggestion--mocked by Amalfitano in Part II--that there is a direct kinship between the ancient Greeks and the Arucanian Indians of Chile. In Part III, Professor Kessler, overheard by Fate in a roadside diner, declares that the Greeks invented evil. And then there is Archimboldi's dreamlike encounter with a statue of what he believes to be a Greek goddess during the battle for the capture of Chornomorske." Near the end of 1996, Morini had a nightmare. Very Lynchian - compare Morini's sensation of turning to face evil to 'that' scene in Mulholland Drive. Although Liz is later compared to Medusa, in this nightmare she's more like a Siren. pg 48 the book he was reading was called Il libro di cucina di Juana Ines de la Cruz, by Angelo Morino A real book by a real author and translator, Angelo Morino, who before his death in 2007 was widely recognized as a major force in introducing Latin American literature to Italian audiences. In fact, he translated Bolaño. Juana Ines de la Cruz pops up frequently in Bolaño's works, but this is her first appearance in 2666. Pages 51 - 100 pg 51 Morini began to read some of the names of the recipes attributed to Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz * Sgonfiotti al formaggio - cheese puffs * Sgonfiotti alla ricotta - ricotta puffs * Sgonfiotti di vento - puffs of wind (no filling?) * Crespelle - Crepes * Dolce di tuorli di uovo - Sweet of egg yolks * Uova regali - "Gift eggs" * Dolce alla panna - "cream sweet" * Dolce alle noci - "walnut sweet" * Dolce di testoline di moro - "Moors' heads" - covered in chocolate... * Dolce alle barbabietole - "beet sweet" * Dolce di burro e zucchero - "butter and sugar sweet" * Dolce alla crema - "custard sweet" * Dolce di mamey - "mamey sweet" pg 56 Just one of thousands of old men on their own. Like the machine celibataire. "The Bachelor Machine" - the lower section of Duchamp's "The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even". "Large Glass is also a critique of the very criticism it inspires, mocking the solemnity of the explicator who is determined to find the key" (Marjorie Perloff) "I believe that the artist doesn't know what he does. I attach even more importance to the spectator than to the artist." -- Marcel Duchamp, a sentiment which seems very in tune with Bolaño's vision in 2666. Like the bachelor who suddenly grows old, or like the bachelor who, when he returns from a trip at light speed, finds the other bachelors grown old or turned into pillars of salt. "Returns from a trip at light speed" -- brings to mind several stories including Return from the Stars by Stanislav Lem and The Forever War by Joe Haldeman, as well as folktales such as Rip van Winkle, Urashima Taro, and Oisín. "Pillars of salt" -- reference to Lot's wife. pg 60 Pelletier opened a book on the work of Berthe Morisot, the first woman impressionist, but soon he felt like hurling it against the wall. More foreshadowing of the violence in the section with the taxi driver; naturally, this violent impulse is over-intellectualized and then rationalized away by Pelletier, who also views it as a kind of impotent deflection from the real issue of sex. pg 63 Oh white hind, little hind, white hind, murmured Espinoza. Pelletier assumed he was quoting a classic Maria Bustillos: "I thought I’d better check the Spanish for this phrase, and it turns out that “La Cierva Blanca” is a freaking beautiful poem by Borges—a poem that came to him in a dream! A poem transcribed from the dream of a beautiful, fleeting, “one-sided” English hind." pg 69 "Careful of what?" Pelletier managed to ask. "Of the Medusa," said Pritchard. ... "When you've got her in your hands she'll blow you to pieces." Yet another Greek reference. What follows seems like a bad interpretation, done by two academics over-intellectualizing an offhand comment, "a crass, misogynistic, offhand critique of Norton. Or was it just a misinterpreted sex joke?" (No New Thing) pg 74 When they stopped kicking him they were sunk for a few seconds in the strangest calm of their lives. An oasis of horror in a desert of boredom! pg 76 They thought of Anthony Perkins, who claimed he wouldn't hurt a fly and look what happened The actor most famous for playing Norman Bates in Psycho. pg 78 A little while later he was asleep and he had the following extremely strange dream pg 87 a rest clinic that bore the name of a late nineteenth-century Swiss politician or financier, the Auguste Demarre Clinic pg 95 neighborhoods that were vaguely reminiscent of Chesterton stories but no longer had anything to do with Chesterton, although the spirit of Father Brown still hovered over them, not in a religious way, said Morini Father Brown is a priest and amateur detective created by G. K, Chesterton, chiming well with Morini's professed love for Sherlock Holmes. Pages 101-159 pg 107 Pelletier, Espinoza, and Norton traveled from Paris to Mexico City Natasha Wimmer: "In The Savage Detectives, Belano and Lima travel from the New World to the Old World in the time-honored fashion of Latin American writers. In 2666, the travels of Bolaño's protagonists are reversed. Three European academics make their way to Santa Teresa, and the novel ends with Archimboldi leaving for the same place ('Soon afterward he left the park and the next morning he was on his way to Mexico.') Critic J.A. Masoliver Rodenas, in La Vanguardia, on Bolaño's vision of the sinister conjunction of Old World and New: 'Thus we've come, circle after circle, to a human hell in which the fate of Europe and Latin America are masterfully joined.'"